


What You See Is What You Get

by ajejunestar (ohmyjetsabel)



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Domestication, Fluff, Humor, Kittens, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-02
Updated: 2011-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-09 09:04:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyjetsabel/pseuds/ajejunestar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Mark’s vaguely amused as he watches Eduardo nest. That’s what it has to be. Mark’s seen bears less maternal than this guy.” Mark and Eduardo adopt a litter of orphaned kittens. Angst and pseudo domestication ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You See Is What You Get

**Author's Note:**

> My awkward attempt at fluff.

So there’s this cat.   
  
She hangs around Kirkland, and Mark knows this because her beady eyes follow him with his every exit and entrance into the building.   
  
She’s feral. Some of the students have tried to catch her, cages and bait set out that she’s too clever to take. Instead, they leave her bits of food on the steps. Disgusting stuff, like day old noodles and stale pop tarts, because that’s how most of them live.   
  
Mark doesn’t like the way she looks at him. Her eyes are weird and un-cat-like. They are wise eyes, and Mark’s not sure why _this_ unsettles him, but whenever he locks eyes with the thing, he walks a little faster.   
  
“It probably has diseases,” he says to Dustin one day. Her black fur is dirty and matted in places, and Mark can see her bones.   
  
She’s gross.   
  
Dustin answers, “She was here first.”   
  
*   
  
Someone’s girlfriend names the cat Sassy. Really, plenty of girlfriends have given the thing names, and there’s no reason this particular name should stick, seeing as how there had been far more creative choices, but it does.   
  
She doesn’t look like a “Sassy” to Mark.   
  
She doesn’t look like the kind of cat you could name at all.   
  
You don’t name high-risk animals.   
  
It means you’ve become attached.   
  
*   
  
Everyone’s _attached._   
  
*   
  
Sassy doesn’t have a meow. Mark saw someone feeding her once, just some old scraps of pizza, and she opened her mouth to meow, but all that emerged was a breathy rasp.   
  
Everyone feels bad for Sassy. They say things like, “That poor kitty,” and “I just want to give her a hug,” and “Who’s a pretty lady? Who’s a pretty little kitty, girl? Pretty kitty hungry?”   
  
That last one is Dustin, of course.   
  
Everyone pities her, but not Mark.   
  
It’s survival of the fittest. Sassy is the best con in all of Massachusetts. Just points her beady wise runny eyes to the nearest passerby and _bam_.   
  
Instant dinner.   
  
Mark never feeds Sassy.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo always feeds Sassy.   
  
*   
  
He doesn’t throw her shitty molding scraps, either. Eduardo buys these fancy cans of pate and when he pops the top, it’ll echo through the whole damn campus. Sassy will always appear, as if materializing from thin air, prancing in a circle in the distance.   
  
She’ll sit there and wait for him to retreat before inhaling the food.   
  
Mark says, “Why bother buying the good stuff, it’s not like it tastes anything.”   
  
Eduardo answers, “Because I want to.”   
  
*   
  
Mark knows whenever they eat and the leftovers begin piling up on the counter where it’s going to.   
  
Chris takes her scraps every morning.   
  
Sassy is the best fed cat in the state.   
  
*   
  
Later, Mark will put two and two together, but for a moment, he’s puzzled as to how Sassy had gone from obese to skeleton in the span of a week.   
  
_Disease,_ he thinks.   
  
Chris gives her water.   
  
Dustin gives her the heels of a loaf of bread.   
  
Eduardo gives her a five dollar can of food.   
  
Mark gives her a wide berth.   
  
*   
  
Sassy dies the next day.   
  
Mark knows it because he’s there when it happens.   
  
Kind of.   
  
He’s going into the ComSci building and he sees her in the distance, just perching on a curb. Her beady wise crusty eyes peer at Mark in a way that makes him feel cold.   
  
When he comes out of the lab hours later, Sassy is in the street and she doesn’t meow anymore.   
  
The cars don’t even bother dodging her.   
  
*   
  
Someone’s girlfriend cries and someone else gets Sassy off the street, and Mark watches for no particular reason as they put her into a black trash bag.   
  
The fleas have already fled her cooling body.   
  
Mark figures it’s the first time Sassy has ever been without fleas.   
  
He thinks she’s better off.   
  
*   
  
“Have you seen Sassy around?” Dustin asks that night, frowning. “I’ve got some prime Chinese here, and we’re leaving tomorrow. I thought I’d—” Dustin lifts the box of takeout he’s only eaten half of, and Mark doesn’t say anything.   
  
He should, though.   
  
He should tell Dustin, _Sassy went and got squished._ Because animals don’t look both ways and that’s what they do, they die.   
  
Mark keeps coding.   
  
Blame it on holiday spirit.   
  
Chris knows. Mark knows Chris does because he says to Dustin, “I think someone finally caught her. She’s probably living it up next to a fireplace.”   
  
Dustin looks hopeful and disappointed all at once when he drops the box into the trashcan.   
  
*   
  
Mark’s awake before the sun’s even risen, not that he ever went to sleep. They’d been up late, since Chris and Dustin are leaving for holiday break, and Mark’s—   
  
Mark is staying.   
  
So he was up late and now early. He only goes out into the freezing subzero of Harvard in Winter because he’s running low on Red Bull and the convenience store is best at this time of morning, when no one’s there to look at him or talk to him.   
  
Mark hears something.   
  
He’s sure it’s a bird at first.   
  
Mark’s so sure, he ignores it and walks to the store, buys seven Red Bulls, and makes the trek back to Kirkland with his hood pulled up, because it’s snowing.   
  
When he hears it again, he pauses—realizing there are no birds. All the birds left months ago, flew south, and now there are birdish sounds and it can’t birds.   
  
He tracks the birdish sounds around the building and it gets louder. Like squawking or wailing. High pitched. Panicked.   
  
He ducks his head and finds the source, all nestled between the dumpster and the brick wall.   
  
Kittens.   
  
Dirty loud cold hungry kittens.   
  
Mark turns and walks back to the front, enters the building and climbs the stairs to his room.   
  
*   
  
Chris leaves first, and Mark’s sure Chris will hear the kittens and take care of it. If not Chris, then Dustin, who leaves next. If not Chris and not Dustin, then _someone_ , or _someone’s_ girlfriend.   
  
By noon, the campus is practically deserted, and Mark’s sure someone’s taken care of it by then.   
  
He dicks around on the internet. There’s some asshole on a forum he frequents who thinks that, somehow, Access is better than SQL. Mark argues with him for hours, not necessarily because he really cares, but because sometimes, arguing on the internet is fun, and come on.   
  
Access.   
  
By the time the sun begins setting, Mark’s exhausted. He keeps his laptop open because he might go back and tell the Asshole just how much of an Asshole he is if he wakes up to take a piss.   
  
He collapses onto the bed and closes his eyes.   
  
There’s a huge pile of clothes by his door and a clock ticking in Chris’ room and the T.V. is off and no one is talking and Mark is comfortable.   
  
He gets up.   
  
He puts on his shoes and pulls his hoodie over his head, walks out of the room and down the flight of stairs.   
  
As soon as the door opens, a gust of wind hits him that chills him to the bone. Mark hates that about the north. Hates how the cold gets under your skin and settles there, into the very depth of you, until you’re certain you’ll never get warm again.   
  
Mark circles the building and listens.   
  
He doesn’t hear anything.   
  
He stands before the dumpster and stares at it, eventually turning on his heel, the gravel under his feet crackling loudly.   
  
They explode into shrieks, one clearly louder than the rest, cutting through the clean white of the snow and disturbing the earth.   
  
Mark ducks his head again and sees them milling around, no discernable path, just crawling in circles and crying.   
  
He can just barely reach them.   
  
The loud one is first. When Mark picks it up, it screams with such ferocity that no sound even emerges.   
  
He stuffs it into the pouch of his hoodie, goes back for another, and then another, and then he is stomping up the flight of stairs of the Kirkland building with three wailing newborn kittens stuffed into his sweater.   
  
*   
  
They are loud.   
  
They are so loud that Mark thinks he might go insane. It’s piercing and unsettling, like hearing a BIOS beep—like something is just so wrong that everything stands still until it’s seen to.   
  
Mark covers his ears with a pillow, and when that doesn’t work, he brings his laptop to his bed, puts on his headphones, and blasts Nine Inch Nails.   
  
He sleeps.   
  
*   
  
Mark’s jarred awake by something physical. Someone’s shaking him, which is odd, because no one’s here.   
  
Except Eduardo is, and he’s looking at Mark with a face.   
  
A face that says, _What the hell is going on?_   
  
Mark makes the same face back.   
  
A quick removal of his headphones confirms that the kittens are still doing their best impressions of a blowhorn.   
  
“Why are there kittens on your floor?” Eduardo thrusts a finger at them, as if Mark could ever forget their presence.   
  
“If I put them on the bed, they might fall off,” Mark explains.   
  
Eduardo looks vaguely annoyed, but then, it could be all the noise. “Where did you get them? Why are they here?”   
  
“Aren’t you supposed to be in Miami?”   
  
“My flight got delayed because of the snow. Mark. _Mark_. There are kittens.” Eduardo looks down at them and squats, pets one on the head with the tip of a finger and makes a shushing noise. “Where’s their mommy?”   
  
Mark says, “Got squished,” and Eduard makes another face.   
  
A very sad, understanding face.   
  
“They’re Sassy’s babies,” he guesses, and Mark shrugs. “They’re starving,” he adds, and Mark shrugs again. “Well we have to feed them something!”   
  
Eduardo stands up and there are all these lines of distress in his face, like he’s just sponging it up from their shrill cries and weak little panicked circles on Mark’s grimy floor.   
  
“We don’t have any milk,” Mark supplies.   
  
“Kittens can’t eat milk. They need, like, special formula or something. And bottles.” Eduardo pats his pockets and eyes his jacket like he’s already halfway out the door.   
  
“I was thinking I could just call someone. Campus security or whatever. They’ll deal with it.”   
  
“ _Deal with it?_ ” Eduardo freezes, face puckered. “What if they have them put down or something?”   
  
“I don’t think they euthanize infant kittens, Wardo.”   
  
“So what, only when they get old enough? That’s no better.”   
  
Mark shrugs.   
  
Survival of the fittest.   
  
Eduardo changes his tack. “It’s holiday break anyway. It’ll take days, maybe the whole week before someone gets out here. They have to eat in the meantime.”   
  
Mark had considered this, to no real end, and is sort of powerless to stop him when Eduardo leaves, presumably for _supplies_.   
  
He groans and flops back onto the bed, covering his ears once more.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo’s on his computer because Mark really wasn’t in the mood to research this. They call it _vacation_ for a reason.   
  
Mark stares at the kittens.   
  
They are so ugly. Their ears are flat against their big, wobbly heads, and their skinny limbs sprawl at all angles, like a broken table. There’s a black and white one, a solid grey one, and one that he doesn’t have a name for. Calico, he guesses. Multi-color patches here and there.   
  
The black and white one is the worst. Maybe the others are weaker and have already expended their energy, or maybe the black and white one just has ridiculous lungs, Mark’s not sure, but this thing is so fucking loud.   
  
Mark pokes it.   
  
It screams in earnest.   
  
“Okay,” Eduardo announces, turning. “Okay, so. We have to get the temperature just right. And the hole in this nipple can’t be too small or too big. I should have bought more.”   
  
They heat the first bottle in a bowl of hot water, because apparently microwaving formula is bad. Eduardo squirts some onto his wrist and decides it’s too cold, so they put it back in. Then he squirts more on his wrist and decides it’s too hot, so they leave it on the counter for a few minutes.   
  
Mark thinks if they’re that hungry, they won’t really care how hot or cold the stuff is.   
  
When the time comes to feed them, Eduardo stares down at their little pulsating heap and looks overwhelmed. “Who’s first?” he asks.   
  
Mark points to Loud Mouth and says, “Shut him up,” so Eduardo gets on his knees, ducks down real close to it, and gently eases the nipple into its mouth.   
  
As hungry as Loud Mouth is, it doesn’t like the bottle. Eduardo keeps sticking it in mid-scream and it just keeps wailing. Mark decides Eduardo is being too delicate, keeps chasing its mouth around with the nipple instead of—   
  
Mark snatches the bottle from his hand and pinches Loud Mouth’s nape, tilts his head back and shoves the nipple in. He gives the bottle a squeeze. White formula oozes from each corner of its mouth.   
  
The kitten sputters and Eduardo’s about to yell at Mark, but then it latches on, like a vacuum or something.   
  
Mark hovers in an awkward position above the thing, one hand pinching its skin, the other holding the bottle. Its flat little ears twitch along to the bobbing of its throat as it suckles.   
  
Eduardo looks at Mark and laughs. “You’re like the kitten whisperer.”   
  
*   
  
Eduardo makes another bottle and mimics Mark with the other two.   
  
They are easier.   
  
Loud Mouth’s still eating, even after they’ve both fallen asleep.   
  
Eduardo refuses to relieve Mark of the duty, meaning that Mark’s still perched in his awkward squatting position until the thing has had its fill.   
  
It’s so quiet after.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo decides, “They must only be a few days old. See, their eyes aren’t even open yet and this one still has its little umbilical thing.”   
  
Mark stares impassively at the T.V. The kittens were quiet for all of ten minutes, and now they’re awake again and Loud Mouth is being an asshole.   
  
“That means they have to bed fed, like—every two hours.”   
  
Mark turns around and gawks at Eduardo. “Every _two_ hours? Nothing eats that much, clearly your source is shady.”   
  
Eduardo shakes his head. “Nope. Every website on here says so. And you have to… er… _stimulate_ them so they can go to the bathroom. Maybe that’s why they’re crying?”   
  
“I have no idea what that means.”   
  
“It says here the queens—those are the mothers—they lick their bottoms and tummies and consume the excrement.” Eduardo looks up from the screen and mirror’s Mark expression.   
  
They chime in unison, “Gross.”   
  
“I’m not doing it,” Mark says, and that’s that. Those things will explode like overinflated balloons before Mark stimulates them to the point of excretion.   
  
“This is a lot,” Eduardo says next, pushing the laptop aside. He runs his fingers through his hair and puffs out a long breath. “I’m going to have to cancel my flight.”   
  
“What? That’s irrational.” Mark can’t see someone ruining their entire holiday over a litter of crummy kittens. As for Mark, well. He’d stayed purposefully. If he went home, there’d be people everywhere and he’d be forced to socialize and be nice.   
  
Two weeks in an empty dorm with no schoolwork is like basically Mark’s idea of heaven.   
  
But Eduardo isn’t like that.   
  
He looks at Mark and puts his hands in the air. “If I leave them with you, they’ll die.”   
  
Mark’s not sure if he should be offended or not. On one hand, he’s not a moron, but on the other, he really doesn’t want to deal with them. He’ll probably pass them off to someone else. Some lady at the convenience store, someone in the admin offices, whatever. Someone equipped to deal with them.   
  
Mark promises as honestly as possible, “I solemnly swear to do everything in my power to prevent them from perishing.”   
  
Eduardo says, “Yeah right, Mark. They need fed every two hours. You can’t even feed yourself every two days.”   
  
“I can, I just don’t always find it necessary.”   
  
Eduardo continues, “They need burped. They need affection and attention. And they need to be warm like all the time.” There’s a sudden spark in his eyes and Eduardo looks both worried and enlightened. He says, “Be right back,” and returns seconds later with a towel.   
  
He puts it—   
  
“No,” Mark says. “ _No_. Wardo, no. You are not even thinking of putting _those things_ on my—“   
  
Eduardo places Loud Mouth Asshole smack dab in the middle of the towel, which is draped over Mark’s laptop keyboard.   
  
It immediately silences.   
  
*   
  
The calico is active. Eduardo keeps putting it back in the middle of the keyboard and it keeps crawling away, sprawled legs heaving it across the towel. The solid grey one is entirely calm. Lethargic, even. Mark thinks it might be close to dying if the other two are his basis for comparison.   
  
LMA (Mark’s decided that an acronym is not technically a name) is, as always, the most difficult one. It can tell time, and Mark knows this because exactly two hours after their first feeding, LMA awakens and makes sure everyone knows just how he feels about it.   
  
“I don’t like that one,” Mark announces. “It’s an asshole.”   
  
Eduardo is appalled. “You can’t call an infant kitten an asshole, Mark.”   
  
“I call it like I see it and that thing is a fucking asshole.”   
  
It won’t eat for Eduardo. Mark doesn’t know why, maybe it craves the cold dispassion of Mark’s nape pinch or the way it can annoy Mark by merely existing, but either way, it won’t eat for Eduardo, only Mark.   
  
Mark is tired. Really, he’s so exhausted Mark’s not entirely certain he hasn’t been hallucinating this whole ordeal.   
  
Eduardo doesn’t let him sleep—not until LMA is satisfied, because as Eduardo says, “That’s the nature of parenting. You sacrifice your own wants and wellness for the sake of your young.”   
  
“I’m not a parent,” Mark insists, “and I don’t have young.”   
  
When he finally passes out, he dreams of his mother.   
  
She’s giving him a look not at all unlike the one he gives LMA.   
  
*   
  
He wakes up at four in the morning. Nothing is to blame but Mark’s bladder, thankfully. He passes his laptop on the way to the bathroom—gives it a longing look, but keeps walking. He figures Eduardo might get mad at him for evicting the kittens just so he can troll the internet.   
  
He takes a nice long piss and ends up standing in front of Eduardo, who’s asleep on the couch.   
  
Eduardo’s got his jacket draped over him and his knees pulled up to his chest, like he’s freezing.   
  
He probably is.   
  
Mark crawls back into the bed, tucks the blankets up to his chin and closes his eyes.   
  
He opens them ten minutes later, climbs out of bed and goes back to the couch to drape his extra blanket over Eduardo.   
  
It’s only in the haze of almost-sleep that Mark realizes he could have just given Eduardo Dustin or Chris’ bed.   
  
*   
  
Mark has to stay alone with the kittens the next morning. Eduardo ventures out to purchase some sort of heating apparatus that is not one thousand dollars worth of Mark’s precious electronics.   
  
Mark dozes on the couch, absently capturing the wayward calico when it wanders off the keyboard and he actually notices. If he sporadically opens his eyes to see if the grey kitten’s stomach is still rising and falling, then it’s only because being responsible for something’s life is kind of weird.   
  
Eduardo returns with a hot water bottle, baby wipes, spare nipples, and a large cardboard box for the kittens.   
  
Mark’s vaguely amused as he watches Eduardo nest. That’s what it has to be. Mark’s seen bears less maternal than this guy.   
  
Eduardo fixes the box up just so. He fills the hot water bottle with steaming water, wraps it up and tucks it beneath the towel lining the box. He checks its temperature with the back of a hand at least five times before gingerly placing them inside. This rouses LMA from what was a gloriously quiet slumber, and annoys Mark quite a lot.   
  
He covers the box with a towel and stands there, appearing pleased.   
  
They’re quiet for the remainder of the afternoon.   
  
Mark and Eduardo have another argument about Eduardo cancelling his holiday plans and he keeps saying, “But Mark, Mark I should be here. I should be _here_.”   
  
And Mark thinks, Oh. _Oh._   
  
Maybe Eduardo _is_ ‘like that’ after all.   
  
He ultimately says, “I get it,” and Eduardo looks relieved, like the burden of an entire vacation under the thumb of his father has been lifted from his shoulders.   
  
*   
  
Loud Mouth Motherfucker gives them until evening before squealing. It’s a slight improvement, but it wakes Mark up again. Eduardo, to his credit, is trying to feed the thing, but it just—   
  
Mark gets up and stomps to the box, swipes a bottle from the floor and shoves it into the thing’s mouth.   
  
It suckles happily.   
  
“I think it likes you,” Eduardo muses of LMMF, but Mark thinks it’s just the opposite. “We should probably sex them,” Eduardo adds, prodding beneath the calico’s tail.   
  
“Calico’s can only be female,” Mark supplies, because he’s tired enough to miss a really ripe window of opportunity that only happens when someone says “let’s sex kittens.”   
  
Eduardo appears surprised to hear this—maybe just because it’s coming from Mark.   
  
He rolls his eyes, “It’s like the most cliché high school biology project ever.”   
  
Eduardo then fiddles with the grey one, face all screwed up in concentration. “I don’t see anything.”   
  
“Does it have balls?”   
  
“I don’t think kittens ever have balls. They have to like, you know, drop or whatever.”   
  
“Just compare it to the calico. If it looks the same…” Mark stops himself with a huff. “Not that it matters. We won’t have them long enough to care.”   
  
Eduardo’s kind of quiet after that.   
  
*   
  
Mark catches him calling the grey one coração, and the calico “Callie.” He has to stop himself from sarcastically saying, “Oh because there’s never been a calico named Callie before…”   
  
Mark doesn’t care if their names are unoriginal or not.   
  
That night, Eduardo tries to sleep on the couch again, but Mark thinks this is hardly sensible.   
  
“There are two unoccupied beds in this suite. Three if you consider the fact that I won’t sleep all night. Just choose one.”   
  
Eduardo seems to consider this while _stimulating_ LMMF and eventually decides, “Yeah, you’ve got a point.”   
  
He chooses Mark’s bed.   
  
*   
  
The grey one’s demeanor begins improving over the next day—if you can call ear piercing squealing and increased movement an improvement.   
  
Eduardo does. “She looks better, doesn’t she look better?”   
  
Mark doesn’t. “She sounds _louder_.”   
  
He’s not listening to Mark. Eduardo is tickling her tummy with a gentle fingertip. Her legs keep folding up to protect the semi-exposed pink skin there. “You’re such a scrawny thing, aren’t you, coração? Yes, you are, runt of the litter.”   
  
He’s also smiling pretty big.   
  
Mark observes, “They’re ugly,” but Eduardo’s smile doesn’t even falter.   
  
“You’re not ugly, you’re just a little baby. Mark’s a real prick, huh? Yes, he is.”   
  
So Eduardo does that. That thing where he talks to the kittens, but half of everything directed at them is in the form of a question he’ll just answer himself.   
  
That’s probably some form of insanity.   
  
Mark doesn’t talk to them.   
  
*   
  
The grey one’s umbilical thingy falls off that night,   
  
Mark is totally grossed out.   
  
Eduardo keeps talking to her, sometimes in mostly Portuguese. Mark suspects it’s done specifically so he can’t goad Eduardo about what’s being said.   
  
Not that it matters.   
  
The croon-y, singsong voice it’s always said in is quite enough ammunition.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo likes charts. Mark’s always known this, of course. Mark likes charts and organization too, only he prefers it to be dynamically generated from a virtual database as opposed to seeing it scrawled over the dry erase board Eduardo’s dragged from beneath Dustin’s bed.   
  
So Eduardo makes a graph. It’s a little ridiculous how thorough he’s being about this. There’s a row for each feeding interval (times three) and columns for the amount consumed, their demeanor at the time, and one for whether or not they… excrete.   
  
He has the fucking thing color coded (LMMF is black. The calico is orange. The runt is green).   
  
Mark’s eyes are almost sore from all the _rolling_. “You’re getting way too invested in this, Wardo.”   
  
Eduardo’s busy erasing lines and redoing them so that they’re distributed evenly and perfectly straight. “You put on a pretty convincing face, but I know,” he says. “I see the way you look at that little loud one.”   
  
Mark scoffs, “With derision and resentment?”   
  
“Yep. You love him.”   
  
“Do _not_.”   
  
“You do. You want to cuddle him.”   
  
“Now you’re just being ridiculous.” Mark has never cuddled anything. Not even when he was a kid. Not even when he’s sick. Not even when there are kittens.   
  
Especially when there are kittens.   
  
*   
  
They fall into a routine. Eduardo takes the daylight hours. Mark was somehow tricked into doing the night shift.   
  
He’s not sure how it happened.   
  
He knows there were Twizzlers and Snickers, some potatoes O’Brien with scrambled eggs and crumbled sausage, and then Eduardo touched his shoulder and suddenly—   
  
He’s sitting in front of that damn box all by himself.   
  
Mark doesn’t stimulate anything but his appetite and, once when it was really quiet and he was super bored, his own dick.   
  
Eduardo keeps saying, “Mark. _Mark_. You have to fill in the chart, okay? I have to know how much they’re—“ Blah blah blah.   
  
Mark is putting his foot down.   
  
He will not stimulate and he will not fill in the chart.   
  
*   
  
Loud Mouth Motherfucking Asshole’s eye is opening. It’s just this weird little circle in the corner of its eye-slit. Mark peers at it and wonders if it can see anything but distant blocks of light. It flails as he inspects the eye hole, little paws clawing at his skin for purchase.   
  
It opens its mouth and shrieks right in Mark’s face, all curt and toothless.   
  
His eyes narrow. “Look here, you little shit. All this angst is unnecessary and if we’re being entirely honest, pretty futile. I’m bigger, have opposable thumbs, and most notably don’t need the assistance of a skinny Brazilian to make a bowel movement. I will win every time.”   
  
LMMFA smacks its lips and, in a clear show of resignation, lets its legs dangle helplessly from between Mark’s fingers.   
  
In black marker Mark adds to the dry erase board, “Eye’s opening.”   
  
It’s not technically filling anything in.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo, like, freaks out.   
  
“How cool is that! He’s developing early. They’re not supposed to open for another day at least.” He spends most of his morning on Mark’s laptop, convinced there’s some kind of post-eye-opening care he’s missed.   
  
Mark is distantly mournful of all the time he’s losing not-trolling.   
  
By the next morning, LMMFA’s right eye is more than halfway open, and the left one has a hole, too.   
  
His eyes are really blue.   
  
*   
  
On day eight, Eduardo informs Mark that their feeding intervals are being increased to every three and a half hours.   
  
In celebration of either this, or the fact that it’s Christmas Eve and they’re too Jewish to do whatever it is non-Jewish people do on such an occasion, they get drunk.   
  
“I’ve never been a cat person,” Eduardo admits with beer-flushed cheeks. He’s sunk into the couch, a bottle in one hand and a kitten in the other.   
  
It’s that runt.   
  
She’s clearly Eduardo’s favorite. He coddles it most of all three, sometimes handling the thing when it isn’t even time to feed it. Mark can’t understand why he’d get so attached to that particular one. Her eyes are only just now starting to open and she’s skinnier than the rest.   
  
If he’s going to get attached to one, then Mark figures Eduardo should choose the one least likely to die.   
  
LMMFA is obviously the most genetically superior.   
  
Eduardo continues, “It’s just—dogs are friendlier. They actually seem excited to see you. You know?”   
  
Mark shrugs. “I hate all animals equally. Except maybe snakes.”   
  
“Why snakes?”   
  
“They eat small furry things.”   
  
Eduardo’s jaw drops and he clutches the kitten to his neck, rocks it a bit. “Don’t be mean! These are like… our babies. Our foster babies. Or something.”   
  
“Stop dragging me into your downward spiral of attachment, Wardo. I never wanted anything to do with them. This is just until the holiday is over.”   
  
Then Eduardo says, “If you don’t care about them so much, then why did you bother saving them at all?” He’s got these big, shiny eyes and Mark’s a little dizzy because it makes everything so inexplicably intense when he looks at Mark like that.   
  
Mark makes a frustrated, inevitable sound in the back of his throat. “I don’t _want_ them to die. I just wish they were not-dying somewhere else. With _someone_ else.”   
  
“I don’t buy that,” Eduardo says, dropping a delicate kiss onto the kitten’s forehead. He looks at her and croons, “Mark’s just afraid everyone will find out he has a heart, isn’t he?”   
  
Mark fights the urge to vomit.   
  
*   
  
“When’s the last time someone kissed you?” Eduardo asks. “Like a real kiss. With tongue and stuff.”   
  
They’ve made a drinking game. Every time a kitten meows, take a shot. But it’s only beer and the kittens are warm and recently fed enough to be quieter than usual, so they’ve upped the ante and are currently playing some bastardized version of Truth or Dare (minus the Dare) and Never Have I Ever (minus the Never).   
  
Mark’s losing. “Graduation.”   
  
Eduardo beams. “Mine was two months ago. Drink up!” After Mark’s turn (When was the last time you ran a virus scan?) Eduardo goes again, “What was she like? The girl you kissed.”   
  
He wants to win this one and Mark thinks he probably will. “She was about six feet tall, dark hair, a little chunky and also had a penis.”   
  
Eduardo laughs at this, maybe thinks Mark’s joking, until he’s suddenly not laughing anymore. “Wait. You kiss guys?”   
  
A shrug. “If I deem them worthwhile.”   
  
“And this dark haired chunky guy was worthwhile, huh?” Eduardo starts laughing again.   
  
He feels something weird when Eduardo takes a shot, because it means Eduardo either hasn’t kissed a guy before, hasn’t since he graduated, or doesn’t at all, ever. Mark’s getting the rules fuzzy, but it doesn’t really matter.   
  
It’s kind of a cross between relief and disappointment.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo ends up in Mark’s room that night, after all the lights are out and all the kittens fed and all the beer ingested. “It’s freezing out there, scoot over.”   
  
Mark’s only half conscious as he obeys, but then Eduardo slips under the blanket beside him and his feet are there and Mark hisses.   
  
“Get your icicle toes away from me.”   
  
Eduardo jokes, “Warm them up,” and he keeps touching Mark with them, and Mark keeps kicking them away.   
  
For no particular reason, Mark’s smiling.   
  
Eduardo says, “If you warm them up, they won’t be cold anymore.”   
  
Mark can’t argue with logic and since he’s still quite drunk, he doesn’t protest much when Eduardo wedges a foot between his calves.   
  
“Mmm, you’re warm.”   
  
Mark’s staring into the dark, awake and sobering up way too fast. “This is kind of gay,” he observes.   
  
“Only kind of?”   
  
Mark adds, “You’re drunk.”   
  
“What exactly makes someone worthwhile?”   
  
“Of being drunk?”   
  
Eduardo laughs softly. “No, of being like the chunky guy from graduation.”   
  
Mark’s very confused. “Uh, I don’t know. The usual, I guess.”   
  
“Usual?”   
  
“Aesthetically pleasant, intelligent, enjoyable personality, etcetera.”   
  
Eduardo’s voice is suddenly very close. “So why haven’t you ever made a pass at me?”   
  
Mark does what he always does when he’s nervous; he says the first thing that passes through his head. “You’re not gay, and also apparently lack modesty.”   
  
Eduardo kisses him. It’s not a great kiss, logistically. It’s dark and he misses, ends up sloppily pressing his lips to the corner of Mark’s mouth and then readjusting, and Mark just lies there, frozen.   
  
When his lips are gone, but his breath is still _right there_ , Mark repeats, “You’re drunk.”   
  
Eduardo kisses him again. When his lips part, he tastes like beer and that familiar flavor of someone else’s spit which should be gross, but in these cases never is.   
  
Mark’s not sure what’s going on. He’s puzzled and his head is fuzzy, but he’s also not stupid enough push him away, so he puts his fingers in Eduardo’s hair and pulls him closer. He presses his tongue into Eduardo’s mouth and makes these soft, grunty sounds in the back of his throat that he just can’t even begin to stop.   
  
Eduardo fists Mark’s shirt at his chest and rolls him on his side until they’re facing each other. But then Mark mounts him and starts pressing down into his hips, and Eduardo’s breathing so so so loud.   
  
Eduardo’s dick is hard.   
  
Mark’s grinding against it, but Eduardo’s grinding back, and it hurts how close their bodies are, bones digging into other bones and sometimes, soft tender places.   
  
Mark ends up coming in his boxers, face buried into Eduardo’s neck as he breathes into his skin and gasps, “Fuck, Wardo. _Fuck_.”   
  
Eduardo is still bucking his hips into Mark’s and he says, “Come on, Mark, admit it. We all know it. You think I’m cute.” And he squeezes Mark’s ass.   
  
Mark’s panting, “You’re more than worthwhile,” and Eduardo comes, makes a sound into Mark’s hair that’s both laughter and whimper.   
  
*   
  
Having a hangover on Christmas morning is bad.   
  
Having a hangover on the Christmas morning following drunken sexual relations with his best friend as three hungry kittens shriek at him is Mark’s version of hell.   
  
LMMFADH (the Dick Head addition came when he awoke Mark, claws scratching loudly against the cardboard) is in his lap, ears twitching merrily along to the soundtrack of his suckling, and Mark wonders.   
  
He wonders how in the _fuck_ he ended up spending his vacation like this.   
  
He had plans, and granted, to most those plans would seem boring and maybe a little juvenile, but to Mark, it signified everything a vacation should be. Laziness. Pornography. Not changing his clothes for a week straight.   
  
Instead he’s sprawled on the floor with this _thing_. It’s suckingsuckingsucking. Like a vampire or a parasite—only it’s got these _ears_ that twitch, and these _paws_ that knead into Mark’s wrist, and these _eyes_ that watch Mark scowl down at it.   
  
Eduardo won’t look at him.   
  
LMMFADH’s eyes start falling. His suckling dwindles to an almost-stop, but then—as if jarring himself awake, his eyes pop open and he begins suckling in earnest once again. Determined to get it all in before he’s forced to succumb to exhaustion.   
  
It reminds Mark of how he gets on a really long coding binge.   
  
He decides he’s going out as soon as he has the chance.   
  
*   
  
Mark doesn’t lie to Eduardo—not exactly. He says he’s going out and he’ll be back, and if he omits where it is he’s going and how long he plans to be there, then it’s because Eduardo isn’t his mother. Mark doesn’t have to say.   
  
He takes his laptop to the library. There’s a little booth in the back that is prime real estate to just sit down and veg out for however long he wants.   
  
Mark is grinning as he lifts the screen of his laptop and boots her up. He’s got two cans of Red Bull in his sack and a Doritos Big Grab.   
  
He could stay here for days.   
  
He checks his email first, ends up chatting with a few acquaintances and sending off some replies before checking back into the forum with the Access Asshole.   
  
The thread has already been knocked all the way back to page four.   
  
Mark growls in frustration.   
  
It doesn’t take long though to find another argument. People are always arguing on the internet. Someone’s always wrong, someone always thinks They Are Definitely Right, and Mark loves watching circular debates most of all, because the obstinacy is fascinating.   
  
He fights with some guy about SEO marketing, in between bugfixes for Course Mash and updates to his music software. He wires in and listens to music and when Mark says “LOL”, he really truly is laughing out loud.   
  
He doesn’t get tired.   
  
He doesn’t get bored.   
  
He’s never disturbed.   
  
*   
  
Mark knows he’s in for it before the door even closes. Really it’s not rational. Eduardo has no say over what Mark does. He’s an adult and a free citizen. If he wants to spend thirty four consecutive hours in the library, then he can do it.   
  
Before he can even walk totally inside, LMMFADH is _screaming_ and Eduardo is there, _seething_. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been looking for you?”   
  
Mark drops his bag, shrugging.   
  
“Twenty four hours, give or take. You know I was one hour from calling campus security?”   
  
“I was just in the library.”   
  
Eduardo’s face grows impossibly angrier at this. “Damn it, Mark, I was worried! And the kittens—“ He thrusts a finger at the box. “I’ve been here dealing with them _alone_ the whole time. _You know_ he won’t eat without you—”   
  
“If he gets hungry enough, Wardo, he’ll eat for you.”   
  
“He won’t, Mark! How is it possible for one human being to be so selfish? Don’t you think of anyone but yourself?”   
  
Mark’s getting angry now, too. Eduardo is _yelling_ and the kittens are _crying_ and this whole thing is stupid.   
  
“Well, don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” Not that Eduardo gives him a chance. He begins ranting, “Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, I’d like to get out of here for a little while, too? Did you ever think that _maybe_ this isn’t my ideal vacation either?”   
  
“So go. I won’t stop you.”   
  
Eduardo randomly bursts, “You never fill in the chart!”   
  
A sigh. “Here we go…”   
  
“Yeah, here we go. You never fill in the chart and you never help them go potty. Did you know Cora is constipated?”   
  
Mark says dryly, “I could actually go on living without that information and be totally fine.”   
  
“I do everything around here—“   
  
That’s hardly fair. “I feed that Loud Mouth every single time—“   
  
“Not in the last… what Forty hours? He’s starving for fuck’s sake, listen to him.”   
  
LMMFADH is trying to get out of the box, which is ridiculous, seeing as how he can’t even stand yet. His claws scrape futilely against the cardboard as he screamscreamscreams.   
  
Eduardo’s quiet as Mark heats a bottle, but Mark knows better. Eduardo is pissed off, probably still cussing Mark out in his head, and Mark just doesn’t see how it’s fair.   
  
He snatches LMMFADH from the box and stomps to his room, slams the door behind him and drops onto his bed with a huff. The kitten’s climbing his arm, begging Mark with his big blue eyes and his panicked shrieks, tail stick straight in the air.   
  
Mark says, “I don’t really think your circumstance merits this degree of self-entitlement. Just so we’re clear about this, because in the future you’ll find high expectations will only result in disappointment, you’re not special in any way.”   
  
The kitten opens his mouth and cries in response.   
  
Mark finally stuffs the nipple into his mouth and he attacks it, a violent suckling. His eyes look angry as he works his mouth around the nipple, stopping in brief intervals to sigh before resuming with renewed ferocity.   
  
*   
  
Mark doesn’t really want to face Eduardo. He has this way of making Mark feel like a ten year old again. Like he was out after the streetlights came on and missed supper or something.   
  
The kitten is still on his bed. It ate an astonishing amount of formula and Mark’s briefly afraid it might shit or piss on his blankets. Instead, it just crawls into the space at the bottom of Mark’s pants and sleeps there, right against Mark’s ankle.   
  
This means, of course, that not only is Mark confined to his room, but he’s confined to his exact position unless he wants to risk waking the thing up and hearing his entitled little asshole cries.   
  
Mark lays back and falls asleep. Mostly by accident, but a little because he just spent thirty something hours in the library and he’s just tired.   
  
Eduardo wakes him up. “Where is he?”   
  
Mark has like, a moment of panic. He probably rolled over on the thing and suffocated it, no telling.   
  
“Oh my god, you don’t know where he is, do you?” Eduardo’s expression can only be described as aghast.   
  
“Of course I know where he is,” even though Mark’s half asleep and drawing a total blank.   
  
Something tickles his ankle and Mark suddenly remembers, might breathe a sigh of relief if he thought Eduardo wouldn’t notice.   
  
Mark pulls up his pant leg, exposing a sleeping ball of black and white fur.   
  
Eduardo’s face visibly softens. “Oh. That’s… kind of cute.”   
  
Cute or not, “I’m tired, so unless you want to see what he’ll look like after ten hours of my tossing and turning on this shitty mattress...”   
  
Eduardo gets the hint and gently plucks the kitten from Mark’s pant leg. He takes the bottle and says, “Sorry. About before. The yelling and stuff.”   
  
Mark knows he’s looking for a reciprocal apology by the way his eyes get all big and shiny again. He settles for, “I lost track of time,” which is both genuine and good enough.   
  
Eduardo must agree because he presses the kitten into his neck and he’s smiling at him and singing, “I knew you wanted to cuddle him.”   
  
Mark groans, shoving a pillow over his head.   
  
*   
  
When Mark wakes up to pee an indeterminable amount of time later, he pauses at the dry erase board.   
  
He scribbles in black marker under the only empty box for the last interval, “50 CCs.”   
  
Eduardo says, “Thank you,” and Mark grumbles.   
  
*   
  
He sleeps for more like twelve hours. Eduardo’s asleep on the couch again when Mark wakes up.   
  
They don’t acknowledge Christmas Eve. They’re always acknowledging Christmas Eve. You understand.   
  
At least he has Chris’ blanket this time.   
  
Mark stands in the middle of the common room eating a bowl of cereal, idly wondering what he’ll do today. He’ll stay in the dorms, but not because of Eduardo and definitely not because of the kittens.   
  
Mark peers into the box.   
  
The girls are sleeping, but WYSIWYG is awake. Mark’s decided if he’s going to keep mentally referring to _the thing_ by an acronym, it should at least be pronounceable and somewhat nameish-sounding.   
  
Nameish sounding acronyms aren’t technically names.   
  
Mark’s surprised he’s milling around in the box, because he’s being so quiet. Mark didn’t think that was possible for him—being awake and quiet all at once—but he’s just crawling around, silent.   
  
He’s also noticing how fluffier they look. Before, their fur lengths all looked the same, but now it’s clear that WYSIWYG and the runt are going to be longer-haired than the calico.   
  
Mark watches, shoving spoonfuls of Fruit Loops into his mouth as WYSIWYG tries shakily to stand up.   
  
He ends up just wobbling over onto his side.   
  
Mark quietly puts his spoon into his bowl, reaches down into the box, and touches his head.   
  
WYSIWYG erupts into sudden, excited wails.   
  
Mark freezes.   
  
He scrambles to the edge of the box and tries to climb it, and the other two, who are apparently light sleepers, quickly join in the frenzy.   
  
Mark looks wide-eyed toward the couch and Eduardo’s watching him. “Uh…”   
  
“It was time for them to eat anyway,” Eduardo stretches and his shirt rides up, revealing a black waistband of fancy boxer briefs.   
  
Mark colors and says, “I’ll heat the bottles.”   
  
They feed them in relative silence while watching a stock report on some channel Mark never surfs to.   
  
“Have you ever heard of Harry Harlow?” Eduardo asks. He’s slouched into the couch, the calico resting on his chest. “He did these experiments on infant monkeys. Took them away from their mothers to simulate an absence of affection.”   
  
Mark gives a noncommittal sound.   
  
“The monkeys who didn’t have any emotional bonds were found to have long-term psychological and physical problems.”   
  
Mark hedges, “Okay.”   
  
“I just mean—” Eduardo plucks the grey kitten from the box and puts it next to the calico on his chest. “You should spend more time with him. If you want to. You don’t have to wait until it’s time to feed them.”   
  
“I’m forced to touch him once every three and a half hours, Wardo. I find it hard to believe an urge in excess of that exists.”   
  
“I’m just saying, it’d be beneficial to his development. Your attention could add like five years on his life or something, you don’t know.”   
  
“Neither do you.”   
  
Eduardo continues petting the girls and WYSIWYG is in Mark’s lap, looking for the bottom of his pant leg.   
  
*   
  
WYSIWYG is always looking for the bottom of Mark’s pant leg. Every time he’s done eating, he’ll push himself around Mark’s lap, using his nose to prod at the fabric of whatever Mark’s decided to throw on that day.   
  
Mark says wryly to him once, “At least something wants to get into my pants,” and he thinks he hears something in the kitchen, like Eduardo’s half laughing, half choking.   
  
Mark tries to talk to it less.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo doesn’t come to his bed again.   
  
*

  
At the end of week two, there’s a bit of an issue.   
  
Chris and Dustin are coming home. Classes are starting soon.   
  
Eduardo muses, “Maybe they’ll like them and they’ll want to help out. Split up the shifts. With that kind of distribution and their decrease in intervals, we’d only have to feed them once or twice a day.”   
  
Mark points out, “Animal shelters will be open by then.”   
  
“Well yeah, but—“   
  
“No, Wardo.” Mark knows he wants to keep them. He can see it in Eduardo’s eyes when he kisses their foreheads, which he basically does like a hundred times per day.   
  
“I’m not saying they should stay forever, just until their development is at a less critical—”   
  
“No.”   
  
“You’re not—“   
  
“Wardo.” Mark fixes him with a look that leaves no room for argument, and Eduardo’s nostrils flare.   
  
“Whatever, I wasn’t asking permission. I can always take them back to my room.”   
  
“You’re forgetting the part where pets aren’t exactly allowed.”   
  
Eduardo just shrugs. “So I can keep them secret,” even as his own doubt is evident, especially when WYSIWYG lifts his wobbly head to wail long and pathetically at Mark.   
  
*   
  
“I expected this out of Dustin, but Chris, I’m disappointed in you.”   
  
They’re on the floor, blanket spread over the span of the common room, kittens staggering around them.   
  
Chris has a definite thing for the calico. “Ohmygod, but look how _cute_ she is, Mark!” He holds the thing to his cheek and turns her to face Mark, waving her little paw. “The cute is strong with this one.”   
  
And Dustin just about falls in love with them all over again, because Chris is a clever fucker and using Star Wars lingo to make Dustin further enamored to them is just shameless.   
  
Eduardo’s talking and talking, “Sometimes I have to split her up from Mark’s because she—”   
  
Mark interrupts, “It is _not_ mine.”   
  
“Yeah okay.” Eduardo says to Chris and Dustin, “You should see how it acts around him. He won’t eat for anyone else and once, swear to god, Mark was cuddling it.”   
  
“Was not!”   
  
Dustin gawks at Mark. “Pause the gay porn, you cuddle?”   
  
“It was hardly consensual.”   
  
No one believes him. Mark’s getting annoyed.   
  
Chris brings up the inevitable, “So what’s the plan?”   
  
Eduardo lays it on pretty thick, even for him. “I wanted to keep them until at least five weeks, but Mark doesn’t want to. Then I thought about taking them to my room, but Mark’s kitten is _really_ loud. I’d get busted.”   
  
“It’s not my kitten.” Everyone ignores Mark.   
  
Dustin says, “This suite has three intelligent and something-like-mature inhabitants. I say we vote. All for keeping the kittens?”   
  
Everyone raises their hand and looks at Mark.   
  
“You have no idea what you’re agreeing to. You’ll never get any sleep. They’ll start smelling soon and vomiting on everything. And anyway, they’ll probably die. Fucking germ incubators. You’ll be lucky if they don’t give you all rabies.”   
  
Dustin is holding WYSIWYG. He says in a Darth Vader voice, “Mark—I am your kitten.”   
  
Eduardo’s doing a shitty job of hiding his smirk.   
  
*   
  
If bottle-feeding kittens had any novelty to Eduardo, it’s worn off by now. Sadly, Chris and Dustin lack the enlightenment that can only accompany waking to shrieking four times in one night.   
  
They fight over who gets to feed the calico.   
  
“Let me do it.”   
  
“Get off, Dustin!”   
  
“It’s my turn!”   
  
“Stop crowding her!”   
  
“Chris. Your sausage fingers are scaring her.”   
  
“Your face is scaring her!”   
  
Mark offers, “Someone can feed this one,” and they ignore him.   
  
WYSIWYG pauses briefly in his suckling to breathe, staring owlishly at Mark all the while. His ears are starting to unflatten from his head, but only a little. He looks perpetually defensive.   
  
Eduardo corners him later, says to Mark, “I’ll try harder to feed that one, okay? With Dustin and Chris helping, you won’t have to even be bothered by them.”   
  
He doesn’t even seem bitter about it or anything. He just looks apologetic, like it’s finally dawning on him that it’s not fair to put this responsibility on Mark when it’s Eduardo who wants it.   
  
Mark agrees, “Okay,” and tries not to stare at Eduardo’s lips, but Eduardo’s face goes a bright pink and Mark thinks he’s pretty bad at pretending.   
  
*   
  
He doesn’t even see WYSIWYG for three whole days.   
  
He hears him sometimes. Angry wails pierce through the thin walls as Mark sleeps or studies or codes. Mark’s annoyed by the knee-jerk reflex he has to venture to the box with a bottle to shut the thing up.   
  
He wonders if Eduardo’s managed to feed it at all, but Eduardo never comes to Mark in resignation, so maybe, who knows.   
  
Mark doesn’t ask.   
  
He doesn’t care.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo stays over one night. He’s just fed the kittens and it’s started to snow, so he decides he’ll stay.   
  
It isn’t until like three in the morning that he comes into Mark’s room, whispers into the dark at him, “Scoot over.”   
  
Eduardo kisses Mark again, but Mark’s less surprised about it and more anticipant than he was on Christmas Eve. Eduardo touches Mark’s chest, and then plays with the hair below his navel, and then mouths at his jaw and shifts into his leg, breathing, “Mark.”   
  
Mark kicks the blankets off them because he’s sweating and he wants to spread his legs so Eduardo can just—   
  
He lies on top of Mark and slides their stiff, aching dicks against each other, fists twisting into the pillows at either side of Mark’s head.   
  
Eduardo comes with a soft cry against Mark’s temple, and Mark’s distracted briefly by WYSIWYG in the other room, crying, but then Eduardo bites his neck and everything dissolves into white noise and thrashing and Mark grunting, “Ah! Ah, _fuck_.”   
  
*   
  
Eduardo’s already up when Mark awakes. He finds him in the common room feeding the kittens. He looks at Mark, but Mark can tell he’s kind of forcing himself to do it, and turns out, Eduardo’s pretty bad at pretending too.   
  
WYSIWYG is screaming.   
  
Mark wires in.   
  
*   
  
Mark comes in one day and everyone’s there—Chris, Dustin, Wardo, even a couple girls he doesn’t recognize. The four of them form a circle around Eduardo who’s crouched down handling the kittens.   
  
If he’s being honest, Mark thinks he could pick WYSIWYG’s meows out of a crowd of a hundred kittens, just because he’s heard the fucking thing do it so much. Mark’s heard him scream plenty, but this sounds different.   
  
Panicked and roughly distraught, reminiscent of the first day Mark found them.   
  
Mark peers through their circle and watches Eduardo squirt a syringe of formula into his mouth. WYSIWYG spits it out when he cries again, wobbling away from Eduardo. He’s got the stuff all over his mouth and chin, dribbling into his fur.   
  
Eduardo’s frown is tight and distressed.   
  
Mark’ suddenly, inexplicably _furious_. “What the fuck are you doing?”   
  
Eduardo’s big, guilty eyes shoot to Mark’s and he freezes. “I—he won’t eat, so I’m trying to—”   
  
“Force it down his throat? With an audience?”   
  
Dustin cuts in, “We thought he might like the girls more or something.”   
  
Mark pushes through their circle and says, “You should have gotten me.”   
  
Eduardo’s jaw drops, and now _he_ looks furious, but Mark’s picking up the kitten and reaching for a bottle, so he keeps his mouth shut.   
  
Everyone watches Mark pull the skin of WYSIWYG’s neck back, tilt his head up, and stuff the nipple inside his wailing mouth, squeezing it just barely.   
  
He doesn’t take it—not immediately. He instead looks at Mark and cries, long and sharp.   
  
Like he’s holding a grudge.   
  
Mark pinches his neck harder and says, “Stop being a fucking dick.”   
  
Just like that, WYSIWYG latches on.   
  
“Wow,” Dustin says.   
  
Chris is laughing. “All that drama, and all he wanted was Mark?”   
  
Eduardo uses a washcloth-covered fingertip to clean his chin and fur as he eats, crouched close enough to Mark’s lap that his cheeks flush red and Mark has to look away.   
  
WYISWYG follows Eduardo’s movements with suspicious, betrayed eyes.   
  
WYSIWYG’s ears are almost entirely unflattened from his head now. They twitch with more ferocity as he suckles, and one’s black, but the other’s white, and he’s clawing at the bottle, trying to get it closer to his body.   
  
When the others have turned their attention to the girls (both the kittens and the humans), Mark sneers to him, “This in no way validates your entitlement.”   
  
WYSIWYG begins purring.   
  
Mark’s never heard him do that before and it startles him. He hopes Eduardo doesn’t hear it and make a scene, like with the eyes opening and the standing and every other milestone of their development that doesn’t really matter to anyone else.   
  
After eating a hearty 56 CC’s, WYSIWYG pulls away, smacks his lips, and starts nudging seekingly at Mark’s pant fabric. He tugs on a leg and points him toward the opening at his ankle, but only because Mark would rather he be asleep than crawling all over his lap.   
  
WYSIWYG burrows inside, curls up next to Mark’s calf, and purrs against it until he doesn’t anymore.   
  
Mark’s in that same position two hours later, when one of the girls gives him her phone number.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo stays again that night. He comes into Mark’s bedroom after everyone’s fallen asleep and has his mouth on Mark’s before he’s even gotten into the bed fully.   
  
He grabs Mark’s hand and pushes it down the front of his pants, whispering into his ear, “Please?”   
  
Mark jerks Eduardo off beneath the blankets.   
  
After, when they’re both sweaty and sticky and breathing a little more evenly, Eduardo asks, “Are you going to call that girl?”   
  
Mark rolls over and goes to sleep.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo comes over after class every day. He lifts the towel on the box, which inevitably sends the kittens into an excited frenzy, and smiles at them, singing, “Who’s a hungry baby?”   
  
He doesn’t even ask before thrusting WYSIWYG at Mark.   
  
With only five intervals per day, Eduardo only has to feed them twice. Chris takes the early morning and Dustin takes the late-night, while Mark—   
  
He has to be present for. Every. Single. One.   
  
The late night feedings are the worst. Not because Mark’s tired—it’s actually the opposite. But because Dustin always wants to disturb them sooner than necessary and Mark has to fight tooth and nail to keep him away from the box.   
  
Friday night, Dustin brings home a girl. Lucy Whatever. No matter how often it happens or how obvious it is that at least half of them are less than heterosexual, a girl in the suite will always be something like a rarity worthy of celebration in the form of beer and/or liquor.   
  
Mark’s going to just hermit away in his room, but the company is more familiar than not and Mark doesn’t see why he should have to exile himself for some random girl.   
  
Lucy hovers at the edge of the couch, looking half afraid of touching anything that isn’t her beer and more than a little bored, until Dustin mentions kittens.   
  
Her posture loses all defensiveness. Mark finds it kind of fascinating, almost like she’s been suspicious they were all murderers until kittens were involved, because a murderer wouldn’t foster a litter of orphaned kittens, would they?  
  
She wants to know, “Where are they?”   
  
Dustin looks at Mark and Eduardo like, _Don’t be a cockblocker._   
  
Since no one listens to Mark’s protests pretty much ever, they end up in a circle on the floor once again, kittens in the middle of a spread blanket.   
  
They’re getting better at walking. Maybe a little too good. They can stand easily now, and though their attempts at running will only result in eventual faceplants, they’re more mobile than not.   
  
Chris coined the phrase, “Like a kitten to the edge of a blanket.” They never stand still, and they’re no longer satisfied with unproductive circles. The calico is scarily curious and most active of all, still. WYSIWYG would be more active if he weren’t getting so chubby. As it is, he’ll half-climb Mark’s chest to get to a bottle, but not much else.   
  
The runty grey one, or Cora, lags behind as always with her skinny legs and still-wobbly posture.   
  
“This pretty lady is Wicket,” Dustin says, handing Lucy the calico.   
  
Mark can almost see Eduardo swallow his insistence that she needs to wash her hands before handling them.   
  
Her eyes go big and soft and she practically yells, “Awwwww!”   
  
Chris adds, “She looks all innocent and sweet, but don’t let her fool you. Wicket’s a perpetual violator of the No Claws Clause.”   
  
“This one is Cora,” Dustin continues, pointing out the runt. “She’s super mellow. Never violates the No Claws Clause. Very agreeable.”   
  
WYSIWYG is sitting in the middle, appearing rather bored. “And that one?”   
  
Dustin’s face turns pensive. “We’ve been playing with names for him. He’s umm. High maintenance, I guess. I was thinking of Greedo.”   
  
Mark has the sudden and overwhelming urge to say with finality, _No._   
  
He remains silent.   
  
It’s at this point that WYSIWYG spots Mark in the circle.   
  
He beelines right toward him, falling on his face multiple times before climbing Mark’s shin into his lap. He puts his paws on Mark’s stomach and cries.   
  
Mark’s kind of drunk. “Contrary to what I’m sure you must believe, I am not an automatic formula dispenser. Go play or like, be an asshole over there with the rest of your kind.”   
  
WYSIWYG wails.   
  
Mark scowls.   
  
WYSIWYG begins kneading his stomach with his brambly paws, a clear violation of the No Claws Clause—not that Mark ever uses this phrase.   
  
Eduardo explains, “That one also only likes Mark.” And Dustin adds, “He’s really lazy. Kind of fat, too.”   
  
Mark argues, “He’s not lazy, he’s just selective of what warrants his interest.”   
  
“That’s Mark-code for arrogant _and_ lazy,” Eduardo laughs.   
  
“That runt you call ‘mellow’ is just as lazy, if not more.”   
  
Eduardo gasps. “Cora’s not lazy! She’s just a little underdeveloped.”   
  
“She’s clearly genetically inferior. WYSIWYG would take her in fight, easy.” Mark’s gulping though a sip of beer when he realizes his error.   
  
Everyone’s looking at him, confused.   
  
And then, like a click, their faces spread into grins, half incredulous, half taunting.   
  
Eduardo shouts, “YOU NAMED HIM, I KNEW IT!”   
  
Dustin’s pointing at Mark, a little too far into his personal space. “Ohmygod, WYSIWYG, like the rich text editor? What You See Is What You Get?! Mark. _Mark!_ THAT IS SO CUTE!”   
  
Chris is wheeze-laughing too hard to add anything.   
  
Lucy looks lost.   
  
Mark argues, “Acronyms _aren’t_ names!” but no one cares.   
  
Dustin keeps saying, “Wizzy!” and rhyming it with far too many words, and Mark just sighs.   
  
“Come on, Mark, admit it. We all know it. You think he’s cute.” Eduardo gives this sly little half-smile and takes a drink of his beer, and Mark—   
  
He looks down at WYSIWYG, who is now trying to climb him. “I’ve never had an issue admitting that I find him cute, but what good is that observation when he’s just using me?”   
  
Eduardo’s smile vanishes.   
  
WYSIWYG fails his climbing attempt and stares expectantly back at Mark, paws still on his stomach. Chris is wheeze-laughing again, and Dustin is saying to Lucy, “For Mark, that’s like basically a marriage proposal.”   
  
Eduardo stays over that night, but he doesn’t come to Mark’s room.   
  
*   
  
It’s the end of four weeks, and they have to start weaning the kittens.   
  
All four are present when Eduardo makes up some goppy mixture of formula-type gruel and lines the floor with layers of newspaper.   
  
He uses two fingers to scoop some of it off a plate and puts it to Cora’s mouth first. She licks what touches her nose but ultimately looks underwhelmed.   
  
Wicket can’t get enough of the stuff. As soon as Chris dips her chin in it, she laps it up. It’s messy. She stands in the middle of the plate and probably ends up wearing more than she eats.   
  
By then, Cora has expressed some interest in her share, but not enough to rule out bottle feeding.   
  
WYSIWYG is combative.   
  
He looks at Mark and whines, clawing his fingers away whenever he tries to drop some into his mouth mid-cry. He keeps scurrying away and Mark has to catch him, drag him back to the middle and start all over again.   
  
Mark eventually throws his hands in the air and says to WYSIWYG, “You’re such an ungrateful little dick!”   
  
Eduardo starts picking up the newspaper. “It’s not uncommon for it to take a few tries.”   
  
They wash the excess gruel down the sink.   
  
*   
  
WYSIWYG won’t take it on the second try, either.   
  
Nor the third.   
  
By the fourth, he knows what the sight of newspapers signify and starts climbing Mark’s neck to get away from it.   
  
*   
  
“What about this one?”   
  
Mark only gives it a glance before deciding, “Too furniture-ish.” When Eduardo gives him _that look_ —the one reserved for when Mark objects any kitten-related permanence—Mark explains, “It’s fleece. It’ll be too hard to clean.”   
  
Eduardo must agree because he keeps perusing the high shelves of the pet-themed department store. He points another one out and says, “This one is nylon or something.”   
  
Mark decides, “Maybe too small.”   
  
This makes Eduardo nod with enthusiasm. “Yeah, we should take their growing spurts into consideration.”   
  
Mark rolls his eyes. “This one looks good,” he says of a larger nylon kennel. “It zips.”   
  
Eduardo inspects Mark’s choice and observes, “Looks a little flimsy.”   
  
They keep browsing until they decide on a kennel that’s sturdy, large, and easy to clean. It’s also way cheaper than they expected, so they still have fifty dollars left over from the money the four of them pooled together.   
  
They had to because Wicket has flown the nest.   
  
More specifically, she’s figured out that when she pulls the towel covering the box inside with her, she can then scale it up and out.   
  
When they awoke that morning, she was just wandering the common room. Mark and Chris found her batting at an empty potato chip bag, big eyes sparkling whenever it made a crinkle.   
  
Mark considers the money left over and hates to admit it, but, “Maybe we should offer them predatory stimulation.”   
  
“And in Mark-Speak that would mean…?”   
  
“Toys.”   
  
Eduardo’s eyes go big and he pivots toward that aisle, like he’s been consciously aware it existed the whole time, but has been careful not to acknowledge it.   
  
“I think that’s probably a good idea. Predatory stimulation.” Eduardo basically power walks to the toy department, where he borderline turns into a cat himself.   
  
“Oh, look! This one has feathers!” He’s shaking some fuzzy thing attached to a stick.   
  
Mark likes the miniature mice with the bells on the tails. “It’s practical. Mice are something they’ll actually hunt.”   
  
Eduardo gets them both and says, “We should consider potty training too, since we’re here.”   
  
Mark sees like, the Holy Grail of litter boxes.   
  
It cleans itself.   
  
Sadly, it’s ridiculously priced, so Mark settles for the plain box with bag liners and decides to give the duty to Dustin.   
  
Same difference.   
  
They make out with ten extra bucks, which Mark offers to spend on the taxi back to campus, but Eduardo waves him off and pays it himself.   
  
When they emerge from the car, Eduardo says to Mark, “Do you want to like, go out tonight?”   
  
“Go out where?”   
  
Eduardo’s cradling the litter box under an arm and he looks away, grinds his heel against the gravel. “You know like, to eat or—” He trails off into a shrug.   
  
Mark’s mouth is suddenly very dry. “Like what, a date or something?”   
  
Eduardo shrugs again. “Like, I guess, kind of a date. If you want it to be.”   
  
“Do _you_ want it to be?”   
  
“I mean—I would’ve asked you. Before. But I know how you’re like…” Eduardo waves a hand in some vague gesture Mark can’t decipher.   
  
“I’m like what?”   
  
Eduardo pushes a hand through his hair, expelling a flustered breath. “I don’t know, like, resistant. To attention and—affection or whatever. Should we be out here with this stuff? It’s kind of conspicuous.”   
  
Mark opens his mouth but doesn’t know really what to say. He eventually manages, “Affection, that’s—that’s something you want to…?”   
  
He shifts the litter pan to his other side, looks somewhere in the distance, and says, “Well yeah, but—I know you don’t like that, so I was trying to just—I don’t know. Keep it simple. Or something. It was dumb.”   
  
Mark’s a little frustrated. “Why does everyone assume I’m some kind of callous android?”   
  
Eduardo looks at him then, incredulous. “It took you four weeks to admit you didn’t hate a kitten, Mark. A kitten for fuck’s sake. Who doesn’t like kittens?” Mark’s going to object that he’s never actually admitted to not hating the kitten, but then Eduardo continues, “And I’m not innocent and fluffy and small and cute. Don’t you get it? It’s like, setting myself up for disappointment.”   
  
Eduardo makes an agitated, growling-like sound in the back of his throat and stomps into the building.   
  
Mark spends most of the climb to the suite wondering if they’re going on a date or being frustrated with each other or both at the same time.   
  
He never gets a chance to ask.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo looks like someone just ripped out his heart and shoved it down his throat. “What happened?”   
  
Chris has a hand on his waist and the other on his head. “I went to feed her and she was just—like that.”   
  
Cora’s staggering around in a circle and falling over. It’s kind of like when she was only a week or two old, only this time everyone knows she’s learned how to walk.   
  
She keeps getting up and tumbling to her side, until she rests there and lets out a single, weak cry.   
  
Her eyes are unfocused.   
  
No one wants to say it, but Mark can see in their faces they’re thinking it. This is something neurological, and Cora will probably be dead by nightfall.   
  
Eduardo gets down on the floor and strokes the fluff of her side, jerking back when she tries to stand up again.   
  
She falls over and squirms before stilling, crying once more.   
  
Dustin says, “I can’t watch this,” and leaves the room.   
  
Chris is covering his mouth.   
  
“She hasn’t been eating as much as usual, but I just thought it was the weaning.” Eduardo watches her with a stony face, but Mark can see all the emotion lurking just beneath the surface.   
  
Mark’s first thought is that they should separate her from the litter, just in case it’s contagious. But then he looks at WYSIWYG in the box next to her, and maybe Mark has never admitted aloud to not hating him, but he knows what he’d do if it were WYSIWYG.   
  
“Let’s just take her to the vet.”   
  
Eduardo and Chris look at him.   
  
“You have money, Wardo. I know we wanted to split the financial responsibility evenly, but this is an adequate exception, right?”   
  
Chris’ eyes say what his mouth can’t. “But it looks like it’s probably not—” _Anything they can treat._   
  
Mark shrugs. “Never know unless you try. And if there isn’t any hope, at least she won’t suffer for an indeterminable length of time.”   
  
It doesn’t matter, anyway.   
  
Eduardo’s already packing them all into the kennel.   
  
*   
  
The vet stinks like, really bad.   
  
Eduardo and Mark sit side by side, the kennel resting on the linoleum before them.   
  
Mark watches Eduardo fill out the forms. He puts down each of their names, including WYSIWYG.   
  
Mark guesses it’s official then, acronyms are names after all.   
  
Wicket is at the door of the kennel, climbing it and falling back, and climbing it again. WYSIWYG is in the back, probably bored and wondering when his next meal will be.   
  
Cora is still falling over and crying.   
  
Eduardo’s face gets really tight when she does that.   
  
They wait for what seems like hours and dogs keep coming up to sniff the kennel and Mark keeps glaring at them and their owners until they’re tugged away.   
  
Finally, a lady comes out of a room and calls, “Saverin-Zuckerberg kittens.”   
  
Eduardo scrambles out of his seat and hefts the kennel into the bright room, puts it onto the silver table and looks inside.   
  
“She’s really sick,” he’s telling the lady. “She hasn’t been eating and she’s been a little constipated. And then today we came home and she was sort of like, staggering—”   
  
The lady smiles sympathetically and nods along, opens the flap on the kennel and takes them out one by one.   
  
Mark has to corral them with his arms so they won’t walk off the table.   
  
The lady pulls out a thermometer and Eduardo’s still babbling. Mark is briefly amused by the mental image of this person trying to get a thermometer into WYSIWYG’s mouth, until he realizes.   
  
It doesn’t go into their mouths.   
  
Eduardo’s words die in his throat as she shoves it up Cora’s ass.   
  
They both look away.   
  
The lady coos to the kitten, “I know, that’s awful, isn’t it? Just a few more seconds, sweetheart.”   
  
When it beeps they both look back at the table but then she repeats the process on Wicket and then WYSIWYG, who lets out a mighty wail and looks at Mark with huge, shocked eyes.   
  
She puts the thermometer away and walks out.   
  
Eduardo exhales. “That was—”   
  
“Incredibly invasive.”   
  
“Yeah, god.”   
  
Eduardo holds Cora so that he won’t have to watch her symptoms, and Mark keeps catching Wicket and putting her back in the middle of the table. Ultimately, he decides that’s too much work and just locks her and WYSIWYG in the kennel again.   
  
Their vet is an elderly man with a shiny, bulbous nose. There’s a mole right on the tip of it and it’s all Mark can look at.   
  
He instructs Eduardo to put Cora on the table and he watches with a pensive expression that smoothes when she circles herself and tips over. He puts a light into her ear and says, “Looks like vestibular disease.”   
  
Eduardo looks at Mark and then at the man. “Can you—is there medicine or something?”   
  
The vet says, “’Fraid not,” and Eduardo’s whole face falls.   
  
Mark thinks for a moment he might cry.   
  
The vet continues, “The good news is that it’ll go away by itself with a little TLC.”   
  
At Eduardo’s owlish expression, he explains, “The vestibular system regulates balance and is responsible for telling her body and eyes where she is in relation to the earth.”   
  
Mark thinks he gets the gist. “So everything’s tilted for her. She’s just… what, dizzy?”   
  
The man says, “There’s probably some abnormal flow inner ear. It could be from infection or mites, or even just idiopathic.”   
  
He explains more about the condition and warns Eduardo that Cora could have a permanent tilt to her head. Eduardo asks, “How long will she be like this?” but Mark can see he’s overwhelmed with relief even as the vet says, “Days to months, hard to say.”   
  
He checks Wicket and WYSIWYG next, prescribes antibiotics in the event of infection.   
  
Before they leave, the vet praises their efforts in rearing the kittens so well, and asks if they have any questions.   
  
Mark clears his throat and Eduardo’s looking at him. “Um, the black and white one—WYSIWYG—we’re having some trouble weaning him. He only wants a bottle, is that—will it be a problem, or…?”   
  
The vet assures Mark, “It’s a little early to worry, but you might ought to try straight canned cat food. Could be he’s just a picky eater.”   
  
Mark nods and adds, “They have fleas. Not bad or anything, but—”   
  
The vet says they’re too young to treat and that Mark can use a flea comb and citrus scented dishwashing soap in the meantime.   
  
He then says to bring them back for proper treatment at the appropriate age.   
  
Mark shuffles from the room and knows better than to think they won’t have them when that age arrives.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo camps on the couch with a laptop, spends the entire night researching vestibular disease and caring after Cora.   
  
Mark comes out and sits with him, rubs Cora’s belly and watches late night cartoons.   
  
WYSIWYG jumps on the door of the kennel and peers out at Mark with his big demanding eyes.   
  
Eduardo says, “I think he’s jealous.”   
  
“Jealous of what, his lack of severe, debilitating disorientation?”   
  
Eduardo laughs under his breath. “No, jealous that she’s actually getting your affection because of it.”   
  
Everything’s really quiet after that.   
  
*   
  
Mark walks to the store that morning, just before the sun rises. He grabs three different flavors of pate cat food, a bottle of lemon Dial, and a bag of Doritos.   
  
The convenience store doesn’t sell flea combs, but they sell lice treatments with the same type of tiny comb included. He stealthily opens a package and swipes one, since he’s only got six dollars and refuses to pay good money for something he won’t use, hopefully ever.   
  
The total comes out to seven oh-nine.   
  
Mark begrudgingly puts the Doritos back.   
  
When he gets to the suite, newspapers cover the floor and Eduardo is tediously scooping globs of gruel into Cora’s mouth.   
  
He looks frustrated, like she’s not eating enough.   
  
Wicket needs no supervision whatsoever. Chris puts her in front of a plate and just gives her some space. She shoves her face into it and stomps around, splashing it merrily into her fur.   
  
WYSIWYG gives Mark a challenging look.   
  
He stalks to where he’s sitting on the edge of the papers and scowls when he backs away. “Salmon, chicken, or Super Supper?”   
  
Mark presents these as if WYSIWYG can choose.   
  
The kitten eyes the cans with disinterest.   
  
“Super Supper it is.”   
  
Mark thinks at first it’s a winner. He spoons it onto WYSIWYG’s plate and he actually smells it, walks around the circumference like he might be intrigued.   
  
Then he walks away.   
  
The salmon stinks up the whole room and Chris and Eduardo look on as Mark replaces the spoonful of Super Supper with it.   
  
WYSIWYG smells it again, acts like he might walk away, goes back to smell it once more, and then actually does walk away.   
  
“Why are you such an asshole?” Mark rants, down on all fours to get eye level with him. “I gave up a perfectly delicious bag of Doritos to buy these for you. There are kittens in China starving or something. Just fucking eat it!”   
  
Chris and Eduardo door poor jobs of hiding their laughter.   
  
“Oh fuck you, with your precious kittens who’re actually tolerable and don’t go out of their way to make every little thing difficult.”   
  
Mark pops the top on the chicken and WYSIWYG watches the ceiling fan.   
  
When it’s on the plate, Mark picks him up and puts him in front of it, dips his nose into it and waits.   
  
WYSIWYG jerks back and licks at his nose, eyes thin as if insulted.   
  
And then he keeps licking.   
  
He lowers his face to the plate and smells it, circles the circumference and sniffs it again.   
  
Mark holds his breath until WYSIWYG finally darts out his tongue and takes a bite.   
  
He looks at Eduardo’s who’s grinning all crookedly and says, “Little motherfucker likes chicken. I’m never touching a bottle again.”   
  
Chris stops him with a laugh, “They still need formula, you dumb ass. Just not as often.”   
  
Mark’s mood is not darkened at the prospect. “Whatever. One day, he’ll be self-sustaining.”   
  
WYSIWYG is now standing in the middle of the plate, pecking little mouthfuls delicately from the mound.   
  
Mark couldn’t smother his smile if he tried.   
  
*   
  
Cora doesn’t improve for a long time. Eduardo ends up taking her back to the vet because she won’t eat. They give her a shot of something that helps a little, but Eduardo—   
  
Eduardo’s sad a lot.   
  
Mark wants to ask about before—with the almost-date and the sort-of-fight—but he doesn’t know if Eduardo’s in the mood to deal with that.   
  
He comes over after class every day just like he used to, but now it’s only Cora he takes from the kennel. He whispers to her in Portuguese and frowns and kisses her head when she only just eats barely enough.   
  
Mark’s in his bedroom one afternoon, just surfing the internet on his bed and being a general slob when Eduardo walks in.   
  
He lies next to Mark and asks, “Can I just hang here for a while?”   
  
At Mark’s shrug, Eduardo lowers his temple to his shoulder, watches him click around the screen and type out notes for an assignment.   
  
Mark gives his words a lot of consideration before saying, “I hope Cora gets better soon. I like her.”   
  
He can feel Eduardo’s eyes on him. “She’ll be okay. Just takes time.”   
  
Mark nods and continues typing but eventually, maybe awkwardly, lifts his arm so Eduardo can rest on his chest. Mark runs his fingers through Eduardo’s hair as he reads, occasionally reaching down to scroll.   
  
Eduardo falls asleep like that.   
  
*   
  
WYSIWYG and Wicket begin cleaning their fur, out of the blue. They’re just eating on the newspaper one second, and the next, they’re licking their paws.   
  
Cora doesn’t do that.   
  
Cora just sleeps, and that’s on a good day, when she’s not trying to stand and falling over, making Eduardo’s eyes impossibly sadder.   
  
Her recovery is so gradual that anyone who wasn’t Wardo wouldn’t even notice.   
  
“It’s embarrassing how happy I am about a kitten taking a shit,” he says, grinning as he throws away a baby wipe.   
  
So that’s how it starts. She just begins slowly regaining her functions, and then one night, she stands up and she doesn’t fall—not immediately. She looks to her left, and then her right, and walks right into the couch.   
  
But she walks.   
  
The next night, she eats the gruel upright, sitting down in front of a plate. Eduardo has to steady her now and then, but she gets more of it down than she has in at least a week.   
  
When she’s done, she lifts a paw and licks it, almost loses her balance until Eduardo props her up.   
  
His smile is super bright.   
  
*   
  
Dustin shakes his arms out, hops in the air three times, and claps his hands together. “Okay. Game face, Zuckerberg.”   
  
Mark rolls his eyes. “It can’t be that difficult. We’re intelligent human beings a hundred times their size.”   
  
But Mark’s not so confident.   
  
He’s got on a pair of rubber gloves and the sink is filled with warm, citrus-scented, foamy water. “Wicket first,” he decides.   
  
It’s best to know what they’re up against.   
  
She flails wildly as Dustin lowers her into the sink, eyes going wide when her paws meet water. She claws for purchase against the porcelain, spraying water all over Dustin’s chest.   
  
She wails.   
  
Dustin screeches, “Why did you get the gloves?! No Claws Clause!” and Mark makes quick work of lathering her up, getting under her skinny legs and around her rigid shoulder blades.   
  
She looks at Mark and opens her mouth wide, lets out a loud, body-shaking exhale.   
  
Mark balks. “Was that—did she just _hiss_ at me?”   
  
“How long do I have to hold her like this?” Dustin’s grasping her at arm’s length, face pointed away.   
  
“Just a few minutes, Dustin. Really, grow a pair.” Mark edges away at her responding growl.   
  
Rinsing her fur is an even more perilous task, as the loud hiss of the faucet has her on edge, scrambling to get away.   
  
They finally wrap her in a towel and she looks—   
  
“I think she’s plotting our deaths,” Dustin says.   
  
Mark silently agrees and points him to the designated de-flea’ing area of the bathroom.   
  
Wicket shivers through Dustin’s meticulous combing through her fur, dunking the lice comb into a cup of hot water as he goes.   
  
By the time he’s done, she’s almost entirely dry, and when placed in the kennel, curls up against the hot water bottle and starts the long process of bitterly cleaning herself.   
  
Mark approaches WYSIWYG with a hard inhale. “Okay, look. I know we don’t always get along, and I know you’re opinion of me is probably going to plunge significantly after this incident, but I want you to know it’s for your own good.”   
  
WYSIWYG blinks in response.   
  
Mark picks him up and takes him to the sink where Dustin is waiting.   
  
WYSIWYG’s eyes get a little shifty.   
  
“He knows something’s up,” Dustin worries, pulling the gloves over his hands. “My advice is to hold him low, let the sink take the punishment, and whatever you do, avoid eye contact at all costs.”   
  
Mark puts him into the water and WYSIWYG lets out a blood curdling caterwaul.   
  
Later, in reflection, Mark will realize just how easy bathing Wicket actually was.   
  
WYSIWYG is more bark than bite for most of the bath. He looks up at Mark with deceived eyes and keeps crying at him, shaking water from his paws. He howls and wails and Dustin takes way too long lathering up his fur, but they all survive relatively unscathed.   
  
Mark takes a moment to appreciate how hilarious he looks, fluffy fur all slicked down.   
  
He’s skinnier than everyone thinks.   
  
Everything is fine until the de-flea’ing.   
  
Once they get him into a towel and Mark’s sprinting him to the bathroom, WYSIWYG decides he’s had about enough of this and almost escapes.   
  
Mark just barely manages to catch him before he hits the floor.   
  
He tries doing it himself, wrapping the towel around WYSIWYG’s body to trap his arms, but then Mark has nothing visible to comb, so he has to employ Dustin’s assistance.   
  
It takes forever.   
  
If WYSIWYG is a stubborn bastard, then his fleas are downright impervious. Mark keeps picking them off only to find the comb didn’t actually catch them. It’s tedious and Mark’s neck aches from hunching over, and WYSIWYG leaves superficial but stinging slashes in his hands.   
  
When it’s finally over, Mark just puts him on the floor right there in front of the toilet.   
  
WYSIWYG runs from the room so fast he skids and tumbles.   
  
Dustin and Mark emerge sweaty and scarred.   
  
Eduardo gives them an exasperated look. “It can’t be _that_ bad.”   
  
Mark challenges, “Let’s see you do it,” and since it is Cora’s turn and no one else is really confident with handling her in a still somewhat delicate state, Eduardo does just that.   
  
He rolls up his shirt sleeves and takes her to the sink, makes it warmer before putting her in.   
  
Her balance is almost entirely restored. Her diet is near-normal, and she may have a slightly tilted head and problems shitting on demand, but Mark thinks she’s going to tear Eduardo to fucking shreds—if they even get that far. Mark’s half convinced one pitiful cry from her will have him instantly caving.   
  
Mark and Dustin look on as Cora stands in the belly-deep water, just staring down at it with her tipped head.   
  
She lifts a paw and smacks the surface, rearing back when it splashes her in the face.   
  
She puts her paw back down and looks up at Eduardo, patiently waiting.   
  
Mark and Dustin share a glance before Dustin bursts, “Aw, fuck you and the kitten you rode in on, Saverin!”   
  
*   
  
Chris comes home an hour later and they’re all on the floor because, as Dustin had—oddly accurately—explained, “There’s something about a clean kitten that makes you want to see it do cute things.”   
  
Mark commands WYSIWYG, “Amuse me,” and tosses him a jingly mouse.   
  
WYSIWYG turns away.   
  
Wicket plays with the feathery stick thing for all of two seconds before finding an old cough drop wrapper beneath the couch. She’s now arching her back and hopping sideways in a circle around it.   
  
Chris gushes, “Ohmygod, she’s so cute!” and drops to the ground to watch with rapt attention.   
  
Mark says to WYSIWYG, “Why can’t you be more like your sisters?”   
  
Cora’s still cleaning after her bath, but she watches Wicket with intense interest. She eventually edges closer to her and the cough drop wrapper, but retreats when Wicket attacks it with a violent crinkle.   
  
Visibly intimidated by Wicket’s aggressiveness, Cora sits next to Eduardo and looks left out.   
  
Dustin says, “No offense, Mark, but your kitten’s kind of boring.”   
  
Mark just watches him sit there with his nose in the air and sighs, “Yeah.”   
  
Wicket plays herself to the edge of exhaustion. She’s a mean little shit, too. She’ll run by Dustin or Mark and slash their feet, skid to a stop and arch her back in defiance.   
  
Chris will invariably laugh at this.   
  
Cora keeps standing up like she wants to join in the fun, but always lies back down the second Wicket does something even remotely Wicketish.   
  
Eduardo introduces Cora to a rampant jingly mouse. He shakes it in her face before dropping it on the floor. She stands up and sniffs at it, watches it for a long moment, and then extends a paw to give it a delicate tap, mid-stretch.   
  
She stares at it with her tilted head, appearing continually confused.   
  
She bats at it with a paw again, and then with a little more force, until she just flops onto her side and hugs it, starts kicking it with her back feet.   
  
With every round of kicks, it jingles.   
  
Eduardo goes on about it like it’s The Most Amazing Feat of Any Feline in the World.   
  
When the girls are both passed out and the others get up to pillage for dinner, Mark looks at WYSIWYG and lifts his pant leg in invitation.   
  
WYSIWYG turns his fluffy head away and licks idly at a paw.   
  
Mark guesses, “You’re mad at me for the bath, aren’t you?” He holds his hand to WYSIWYG’s face, because like, cats respond to scent, right?  
  
He sniffs his hand and looks at Mark.   
  
Just looks at him.   
  
Mark curses under his breath and peers over his shoulder, eventually reaches forward and gently scratches the top of WYSIWYG’s head.   
  
He purrs instantly, rubbing into Mark’s palm and kneading the floor, eyes all squinted almost-shut.   
  
Mark picks him up and puts him in his lap, continues doing that until he’s fast asleep, chin resting on Mark’s knee.   
  
When he looks up again, the three of them are there, and they are staring.   
  
He rolls his eyes and says, “I love the entitled little asshole, so what,” and Eduardo’s smiling.   
  
*   
  
He stays over that night.   
  
Mark’s almost asleep when he hears the door open, but the click of it closing has him hyper-aware of everything.   
  
He scoots over without even being asked.   
  
Eduardo settles warmly beside him and Mark waits a long time for him to do something, until he realizes he’s possibly just going to sleep.   
  
Mark says, “Is this one of those things where you’re going to make me wait?”   
  
He stirs a little and breathes, “What?”   
  
“You know, like,” Mark sighs. “Where we can’t have orgasms for a designated period of time, or until we’ve both expressed our _feelings_ , or something dumb like that.”   
  
Eduardo’s quiet for a moment, and then he laughs. “No?”   
  
“Oh. Good. Because that would be annoying.”   
  
“I agree.”   
  
But Eduardo still doesn’t do anything.   
  
Mark clarifies, “So the situation we’re both mutually engaged in at this point allows for sexual contact?”   
  
“Yeah, I guess. It—it sounds a lot less sexy when you say things like that.”   
  
“You’re not kissing me.”   
  
“You’re not kissing me either.”   
  
Mark ventures, “So this is one of those things where you’re waiting for me to make the first move?”   
  
Eduardo yawns. “Pretty much.”   
  
“See, why—why don’t you just say that up front? I don’t like that. I’m not a mind reader, and I don’t expect other people to be.”   
  
“Because it means more,” Eduardo explains, “knowing you’re doing something because you feel like it and not just because it’s expected of you.”   
  
Mark turns to him and says, “When have I ever done what’s expected of me?”   
  
Eduardo’s pauses, but then Mark can feel his eyes on his face. He says, “Just fucking kiss me already.”   
  
Mark obeys. First they're kissing loudly, smacking sounds echoing through the dark, until the smacking turns to panting and Mark rolls on top of Eduardo, tries to rut against him. Eduardo pushes him off and puts his hand down Mark’s boxers, teeth nipping at his jaw.   
  
He breathes heavy to Mark, “I want to suck it, okay?”   
  
Mark’s showing no objection whatsoever to _that_ , so Eduardo’s head disappears beneath the blankets. He gasps when he feels the warmth of Eduardo’s mouth lowering around him, toggles between watching it rise and fall from above the blankets and pulling them up to futilely strain his eyes at the source of the wetslick sounds there.   
  
He says, “I’m going to come,” and Eduardo hums, so Mark elaborates, “Really hard, you might want to—”   
  
He pulls off right as the first wave of pleasure hits Mark. He strokes him through it, wiping slobber from his mouth as Mark whines and pushes into his hand.   
  
Eduardo’s face appears from beneath the blankets. He hedges, “My turn, right?”   
  
Mark actually honest-to-god snorts and tugs Eduardo’s pants down.   
  
After, he asks Mark if he wants to go out again.   
  
This time, Mark says yes please.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo appears in Mark’s doorway. “Where’s Cora?”   
  
“Hello to you too,” Mark responds wryly, eyes never leaving the screen.   
  
“Hi. Where’s Cora?”   
  
“Do I look like a cat GPS?”   
  
Eduardo clucks his tongue and retreats. Mark can hear him in the common room calling to her, little kissy sounds that make Mark look at WYSIWYG and say, “You’re so lucky you got me instead.”   
  
WYSIWYG is too busy gnawing on a cord to hear it.   
  
Mark pauses at that thought and swivels his chair, snaps once at WYSIWYG. “I’ll put your little ass back in the kennel,” he warns.   
  
He stills and drops the cord, roams for an aimless moment until he sees Mark’s shoelace.   
  
He settles for it.   
  
Mark goes back to coding, and even though he can never be totally wired in—not with a three month old kitten gnawing his cords—things feel normal enough.   
  
Eduardo emerges with Cora trotting close on his heels, her head all angled. “She was in the bathroom again. I keep telling you guys to shut that door.”   
  
Mark grunts but doesn’t stop coding.   
  
At some point, WYSIWYG jumps in his lap and decides he’s ready to sleep.   
  
He does this to Mark a lot—he’ll just look down and WYSIWYG will be there, and Mark won’t remember him ever jumping up.   
  
His warm weight and occasional purr is weirdly comfortable.   
  
By eleven, Mark can hear Eduardo on the bed behind him, growing restless. “Take a break,” he whines.   
  
“Just let me upload this,” Mark promises.   
  
Eduardo comes to stand behind him, peers at the screen over his shoulder. “What’s new today with the site?”   
  
“Just bugfixes actually.”   
  
“Did you fix the thing where I can’t upload big pictures of Cora?”   
  
Mark nods and goes into a convoluted explanation about exif data and encryption, and to Eduardo’s credit, he almost looks like he cares.   
  
Turns out, Harvard students having pets is more common than Eduardo or Mark expected. They’re not always snuck on campus, of course. Sometimes they're just left behind at home and end up being missed or something. Once a little bit of word got around about the kittens, people started showing up wanting to see them and asking about Cora.   
  
First, Mark just made a blog. And it’s not like it was for _him_ or anything. He just wanted to give Eduardo a place to brag about Cora and upload pictures, but then Dustin wanted to make a post, and then Chris made a web comic, and pretty soon, Mark had an idea.   
  
A site to connect the world with their pets.   
  
“How many users are we up to?” Eduardo asks, and Mark closes the laptop, stares down at the ball of black and white fur sleeping on his legs.   
  
“Twelve hundred.”   
  
Eduardo looks surprised. “That’s like, doubled since Wednesday, right?” At Mark nods, he looks thoughtful. “We should set a goal for advertising. Like three thousand?”   
  
Mark disagrees, “A hundred thousand.”   
  
Eduardo’s eyes get big. “Geez, you aim high, don’t you What about like… ten thousand.”   
  
“Ninety, best offer.”   
  
Eduardo gives a put upon sigh and lies back, pushes a hand through Cora’s long fur. “Eighty and I get laid tonight.”   
  
Mark smirks.   
  
*   
  
Eduardo’s hovering over Mark, breathing hot into his mouth as they kiss. Mark spreads his legs further and pushes into his thrust, feels his toes curl when Eduardo’s hips clap against his thighs.   
  
Mark says, “Harder,” and Eduardo adjusts, braces his hands against the pillows and begins pushing into Mark with enough force to make the bed hit against the wall.   
  
He’s looking at Mark with a really intense, breathless expression.   
  
It’s not uncomfortable.   
  
With every collision of the bed against the wall, Mark’s eyes squeeze shut, a grunt pushing between his teeth. Then Eduardo pulls away from Mark’s face and sits back on his heels, holds his hips and snaps them to his body in time with his thrusts.   
  
Mark squeezes his eyes closed again, biting down on a swollen lip.   
  
Eduardo’s hair tickles his chest and Mark arches toward it.   
  
Until he realizes it’s not Eduardo.   
  
Mark opens his eyes and WYSIWYG is sitting in the middle of his heaving chest, cleaning a paw. “Get off me!”   
  
Eduardo freezes and is about to look at Mark with a very confused _but you asked for it_ expression until he sees the kitten.   
  
Mark says, “I thought you put them in the kennel!” and Eduardo looks around, as if disoriented.   
  
“I did, I swear!”   
  
WYSIWYG has this habit.   
  
The first time it happened, it was hilarious to pretty much everyone but Mark, who lost his boner and was effectively cheated out of a good orgasm. The second time it happened, it was annoying. The third, fourth, and fifth times it happened, it became clear that WYSIWYG was possibly a bit of pervert.   
  
Or as Eduardo likes to speculate, “He just wants all of your attention.”   
  
Eduardo gets up and pulls on his pants, wrenches the door open and leaves the room.   
  
Mark shoves WYSIWYG off the bed. “Cockblocking freak!”   
  
He burrows into the leg of Mark’s shed pants, turning so that his head peeks out, and resumes cleaning.   
  
Eduardo appears again, says incredulously, “It’s unzipped.”   
  
They share a look and don’t need to further conjecture on the culprit behind the escape.   
  
They chime in unison, “Wicket.”   
  
She’s scarily smart and Mark doesn’t think it’s much of a stretch. They’ve been witness to her opening doors, after all.   
  
They resolve to shop for another kennel over the weekend. Once Wicket’s found a vulnerability, all hope is lost.   
  
Mark’s almost asleep, Eduardo’s arm draped over his side, when WYSIWYG sneaks onto the bed again. Mark can feel him turn in a circle before delicately lowering himself to lie down, right next to Mark’s face.   
  
Mark pets his head and he purrs.   
  
He’s almost asleep again when he’s jarred awake by the realization that he’s _cuddling_ WYSIWYG and Eduardo is _cuddling_ him.   
  
Mark stares into the dark and curses.


End file.
